


There's a Leak in this Boat

by hanktalkin



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: College, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, Timeline Shenanigans, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 03:28:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18002960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanktalkin/pseuds/hanktalkin
Summary: Warren is dating Max. Max is dating Chloe. Chloe and Warren can't stand each other.





	There's a Leak in this Boat

Well, that’s an exaggeration. Warren doesn’t mind Chloe, couldn’t care less actually, if not for the fact that sometimes he thinks that maybe she isn’t such a good influence on Max. (Like, do they _really_ have to go break into random areas on campus in the middle of the night? And he knows they smoke pot when they’re over at Chloe’s place, he knows, because Max comes back smelling awful and usually forgets her keycard so Warren has to go down and let her into the dorm. Max has a scholarship for Christ’s sake! Chloe has some nerve risking that for weed.) But other than that…he doesn’t mind her. Despite sharing a girlfriend, with Chloe’s not even a student, and her and Max having stringently dedicated “girl time,” they hardly ever see each other.

No, it’s _Chloe_ who has a problem with _him_.

He knows that like he knows everything else, through both some scientific reasoning and a prickle in the back of his neck when he looks away from her. Chloe isn’t the nicest person in the best of times, but when it comes to him he feels a particular thread of malice winding between them. The way she mocks him more than most strangers, the way she shits on movies just because she knows he likes them. Little things, but that only go to fuel the knowledge that she’s glaring at him whenever he turns his back.

Warren isn’t the jealous sort. He couldn’t be, to be dating Max. That thesis began back when the two of them were in high school and one day he noticed the way she looked at Kate Marsh and he realized _oh_.

 _Oh_.

But he was fine, he was cool, he was totally still in love with her after that but he never let that come between him and making sure Max was happy and supported. (And if that meant he was a bit of an emotional keg stand, so what? It was only for a short time, and it was warranted when Max was going through a whole slew of mental health crises one after another.) It wasn’t until senior year, with her lips on his and her fingers in his hair that he finally got the picture.

“Hgnn?” was what came out of his mouth, in his best unintentional Tim Allen impression. When he realized how stupid he sounded he shook his head and tried again. “I thought…what about Kate?”

“Kate’s straight,” Max said, still pulling on the edge of his jacket, looking at his lips like she was already planning on kissing him again.

“I meant more from the other way. Direction. Other side of feelings.” His face felt hot, the air outside the party not doing enough when his best friend was unleashing a reality on him he never in a million years thought he would experience.

Max tilted her head. She smirked. “I like you Warren.”

That was enough of an answer for him. As long as he still got to be in Max’s life, he was fine with whatever she did; she always had so much love to give it would have taken more than a mere mortal to stop her. Even when she reconnected with her best friend from childhood, he never spared as single worry when she brought up the idea of an open relationship.

Well, maybe he would if he realized what an investment Chloe was going to be.

“Move over hipster,” Chloe says, scooting Max to the other side of the booth with the hip of her trendily ripped jeans. Across from them, Warren tries not to wince as she puts a cigarette out on a napkin.

She’s late, unsurprisingly, to their totally-not-a-three way date (as Max had so convincingly assured him. She’s perceptive, pervasively so, and it’s hard to miss the way Warren tenses whenever Chloe swings by Max’s room, no matter how good he is awkwardly laughing off uncomfortable social situations. So no, this isn’t a date. This is just three, cool acquaintances hanging out at a mid-priced restaurant. Radical.) Chloe says something to make Max snort.

The waitress comes back to take their order. “Oh,” she says, the little widening of her eye speaking volumes. “Why hello there darlin’. Are you waitin’ for someone too?”

Chloe grits her teeth and smiles like she’s going to devour a small animal. “No. I have everything I need right here.” She drapes her arm meaningfully around Max’s shoulders. The glare turns to smug delight as waitress flusters. “I’ll have the chicken tenders.”

And okay, maybe it’s not fair that whenever they’re out people assume that it’s Max and Warren together, that the two of them are facing more difficulties than he’ll ever have to experience—but Jesus could she at least wait until they get their food? Plus, now Max is blushing furiously, and Warren gets a deep and sinking feeling about the rest of tonight.

The walk back to the bus stop leaves Warren walking a few feet behind Max and Chloe, acutely aware that all three of them could fit side-by-side on the sidewalk if Chloe wasn’t intentionally taking up half the pavement. He frowns, but doesn’t do more than stare as Chloe makes hand gestures to an enraptured Max. They might have made the whole night without an incident until-

“Shit,” Max whispers.

“Max?” Chloe stops mid-sentence.

Warren, mirroring Chloe’s motion, swings around on Max’s other side to see her clutching her nose. There’s blood dripping out of it.

“Max? Is that-” Chloe balks. “Is that the thing?”

“I don’t know.” The barely restrained panic in her voice makes it sound like a lie. “I don’t know.” Suddenly she’s walking again, faster, terrified.

“What’s going-?” Warren manages to ask, only for Chloe to break into a sprint after her, with a frightened shout of _Max!_ Warren swallows thickly, the feeling that this night is going unfold into something even worse than he hypothesized.

* * *

Warren halfheartedly plays Pokémon as he tries not to think about the room next to him. Max hadn’t made it to her own floor, crashing at his instead, and he’d insistently told her to use his room until she thought she could make it up the extra two flights. There are rule about letting girls onto the guys-only floor after curfew, but Warren’s dormmate is out at some party and he’s willing to risk getting chewed out by the RA if it keeps Max from collapsing.

The conversation he overheard weighs heavily on his mind. Before Max passed out, she and Chloe were discussing him quietly, and he was able to pick out the phrases, _I think he should know_ , and _super powers_. The way they talked about it, it sounded like this is something they’ve known about for a while, and Chloe is not happy brining him into the loop.

It’s also…very clearly not just some unspecified medical issue. If it was, Warren wouldn’t pry, he’s not like that, doesn’t want to break Max’s privacy over something so personal. But something _weird_ is going on, something that has to do with Chloe rushing upstairs to get Max’s camera.

He sits up as soon as she walks back through the hall door. “What’s going on?”

Chloe barely spares him a glance. “Hell if I know.” She drops on his dormmate’s futon and puts the camera (and her feet) on the coffee table.

It prickles something in Warren, and for once he’s willing to bite back, “okay, Max just about passed out from eating half a chicken parmesan and walking a few blocks. You _have_ to tell me what’s wrong Chloe.”

“I don’t _have_ to do anything, nerdlord,” she says. Then, with only the barest pretense of it being under her breath, “if Max wants to, that’s her own fuckup to make.”

Warren tosses aside his DS (well, stuffs it between the couch cushions. He’s not an animal.) and glares at her. “Super powers Chloe! I heard you! Super powers! The only reason she wouldn’t tell me that is because you’re telling her not to.”

“That’s because you would freak!” She jabs a finger in his direction. “Like right now! Face it, the only person who can handle this is us, so just back off.”

Indignation forces his arms over his chest. “ _You’re_ the only one who can handle this? _You_? When all you do is drag Max into shit and get high in your apartment? Seriously I don’t care what you get up to, but I’m sick and tired of you getting her all blazed out.”

“Oh yeah Mr. Straight Edge? What about how you can’t go to a frat party without getting shitfaced and not remembering a thing until the next morning, huh? Do you know how fucking _worried_ you make her?” She snorts. “And you think you can shit on me.”

He finds very suddenly he can’t look at her. “That’s different.” He says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Classes…suck. I need kick back sometimes.” That’s normal stuff. It’s not like he has a problem.

“You’re such a judgmental little bitch.” She rises, and he tenses up, but all she does is give his shoulder a shove against the couch. “You don’t think I have shit to deal with? You think trying to pay my shitty rent for my shitty apartment is a work in the park?” The disdain is palpable, but she’s apparently had enough of him, and goes to sit on the chair in front of the balcony door, staring out at the winding campus below.

He waits for a second, but it seems like she’s done. “I’m not…I’m not _judgmental_ , Chloe. I just don’t think you’re being fair to Max.”

“That’s still being judgmental, dipshit.”

He opens his mouth, then closes it. Slowly, he approaches the back of her chair, like he’s trying to rouse a viper. “I’m sorry Chloe. If you think I’m being condescending to you. I don’t…I don’t think you’re bad at all. I just wants what’s best Max. And know you do too.”

Chloe says nothing.

“So yeah. I’m sorry if I ever made you think that I…that I don’t like you or anything. I actually think you’re pretty cool. Cooler than me, anyway.”

“Damn straight,” Chloe mutters, but there’s something missing from her voice this time. She might even have stopped frowning.

“Guys?”

Max’s voice comes from behind them, and Warren turns to see her standing in the doorway of his room. She still has a few tissues stuffed up her nose, but other than that she looks better than when Warren saw her last.

“I heard yelling,” she goes on. “Is everything alright?”

After a hesitant pause, Chloe says, “yeah. We’re cool.”

“Oh. That’s good.” Max looks tiredly at Chloe, her eyes drifting back to Warren occasionally. “Did you tell him…?”

“Thought I’d let you do the honors.” Chloe waves a flippant hand. Now that she’s facing him again, it looks like she’s rubbing the last of her anger off her face.

“Oh.” Max says. “Okay. Warren? Is it okay if we’re sitting down for this?”

Of course it is, and he moves in almost a dreamlike state as Max finally fills him in on the state of…well…time itself. Chloe spends her time staring up at the ceiling, and Warren has to catch himself several times as his mouth falls open.

“So…is that what happened tonight? You rewound time?” He blinks, the possibilities running by him in the millions as he realizes: his girlfriend is a freaking _superhero_.

She shakes her head. “No. Ever since high school…sometimes I just happens. Other Max’s in other timelines do things, and all I get are the memories. It’s awful, because I never know where I’m going or where I am, and in some you’re dead and others Chloe is, and Kate, and Rachel…”

Max is starting to sniffle, and Chloe runs off for more tissues. Warren scoots closer to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and trying to imagine what that must be like. He has no idea who Rachel is, but she must have been important to Max, and knowing more isn’t going to change the fact that his girlfriend is living a hundred different lives at once.

Chloe comes back with tissues, and Max blows until they’re all red and snotty. After a moment of hesitation, Chloe sits down on her other side, and puts an arm around her waist.

“That’s awful Max,” Warren says finally. “I’m so sorry…but we’re alright. We’re here now, and everyone’s alive, and we’re going to keep it that way. Okay?”

“Okay,” Max nods. She pulls them in closer. “I love you guys.”

“We love you too.”

The hold each other close on the couch for the rest of the night, waiting out the worst of the storm.

**Author's Note:**

> _how the hell will I float?_   
>  _with this headrest for my,_   
>  _headrest for my soul_
> 
> this is canon compliant thanks lis comics


End file.
